


They Were Real

by Catriona1011



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Catching Fire Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Mockingjay Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11889822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catriona1011/pseuds/Catriona1011
Summary: The baby that Peeta announces in Catching Fire wasn't just a ruse to stop the Games. They were real...I don't own the Hunger Games or any of the characters. Catching Fire and Mockingjay Spoilers in work.





	They Were Real

I can still hear the gasps of the Capitol when Peeta announced that I was pregnant. They were outraged and so was I. No-one was meant to know. Apart from Peeta and Cinna. The only reason I told Cinna was so he could do everything possible to hide them. Effie and Haymitch thought it was nothing more than a clever ruse to try and stop the Games. They were wrong. 

My child- our child, was real. 

I still remember the day I told Peeta. The sheer joy that crossed his face that I hadn't seen since long before the first Games. I thought that everything was just starting to get back to as close to normal as it ever would. The Victory Tour had just ended. We could start our lives again. 

Then, a few months later, they announced the Quarter Quell. 

I was numb. They were going to send me and my child into an Arena. To fight, to run, to kill and goodness only knows what else. The Quarter Quell had killed someone long before it started. Peeta was a mixture of sadness and anger, which is probably why he decided to announce it. 

I can't even begin to imagine President Snow's face when Peeta had announced it. He was probably smiling in a twisted kind of way. The Games would have one more death than it normally would. Unlike last year, where it had one less than it should. Maybe it was some kind of sick karma. To show that no-one, not even me and Peeta, could cheat the Games.

The good thing about Cinna knowing was that he had basic medical knowledge and managed to give me a check-up at one of the Capitol clinics in secret. He had said that he needed to check my overall health before the Games. Some young Capitol employee seemed to believed him and let him use one of the rooms. 

It was then that he told me he thought it was a girl. 

Mum would have been so happy. She had always wanted a grandchild, and thought she would never live long enough to see them. She did eventually, of course, but that day could have been so much sooner, if it hadn't been for the Quarter Quell. 

Cinna and me had figured out a way to communicate whilst I was in the Arena. He had placed a small two-way communication device, common in the Capitol, inside my pin and tucked my pin under my sleeve, so that no-one knew it was there. He was going to tell me how to try and make sure the baby survived the Games. How long to try and rest after periods of physical exertion, how to deal with the nausea and so on. We both agreed he would tell me nothing which could put me at an advantage over the other Tributes. 

But they killed him when I was in the tube. Maybe somehow they had found out about the device. Or maybe it was because of my Mockingjay outfit. Maybe it was both. But any hope I had of the baby surviving the Games died with Cinna. 

Which is why, three days into the Games, I cried myself to sleep, because I could feel the sharp pains in my stomach, which Cinna had warned me about, could smell the faint whiff of blood which wasn't coming from a fallen Tribute and felt the emotional hell of losing a child only a few people knew was real. 

Now there is peace in Panem, every year I visit the graveyard with my children, Peeta, my mother, President Effie Trinket and Haymitch (they all know the truth about the baby now). I take several bunches of primroses. One for Dad. One for Prim. One for Finnick. One for Madge (because I know Finnick would have done).

And last, but by no means least, I lay a bunch of primroses at the small gravestone of Primrose Everdeen Jr. (yes I named her), and read the single line on the epitaph. 

You were real.


End file.
